ROLEY

  • Thursday, Jan 30th, 2025

    • The fact that FOTUS wants to turn Guantanamo Bay into a ‘relocation camp’ for migrants has me steamed. I know I’ve said this before, but my family was stationed there from August 1980 to December 1982. It was one of the planet’s most unique and awesome places—no other place like it. Then Dubya decided to make it a prison, and that has left a stain on that place that will never wash out. This will ruin it. I’m unbelievably livid, but I’m mostly sad. This is what people will remember about Guantanamo Bay, and not the stories of the people that lived there. I bought the domain gitmomemories.com today, with the intent of finding those stories and posting them on a website there. I don’t know how this will go, but I’ll share more about it when I figure it out.
    • I said that I was hoping for the same level of incompetence out of 2.0, and it appears we got it. Unfortunately, that level of incompetence means the body count continues apace. I don’t want to be Mr. Drama and scream that they’re going to kill us all, but I can’t help but think that a good chunk of people aren’t going to make it out of 2.0 alive. I wish it weren’t so.

  • Wednesday, Jan 29th, 2025

    • I don’t know if this exists in the wild, but here’s a half-baked idea. Develop something that can examine a drive, and organize the pictures, I know that Photos on the Mac can do this to some extent, I’m talking about photos you have stored on, say, an external hard drive and NOT in Photos or the equivalent. Study the photos and organize them into subfolders, or tag them with something that can be searched for easily. I have a series of photos on a drive from my trip to Machias, Maine in October 2004. Herbert (or whatever) looks at the picture or it’s metadata and tags them #machias102004. Or create a folder called “Machias Oct 2004” and dump those photos in there. And for all the photos that have nothing to go on, call them misc, or orphan photos, or something, and tag or subfolder them as well. Yes, that would require manual work, but it would be way less than a folder of thousands of pictures to go through manually. Now, let me admit the obvious: I’m stupid, and I don’t get out much. This may exist and I don’t know it. I’ll go looking around, which is probably what I should have done before I started writing this half-baked, meaningless babble
    • I have a preset in Adobe Audition that foods (that’s a technical term) my voice files for the podcast, and then I export it to a folder for finished files. When I go to Captivate to publish, I drag and drop that file, add some notes, and hit publish. I’d love to automate the whole thing. Not sure that Automator would do all of it, but there’s a mad scientist thing to do…
    • I recently went through a re-watch of a British sci-fi show that’s a little less known than Doctor Who, but still worth your time. Blake’s 7. I have just two words for you: Kerr Avon. Well worth your time, and why this character isn’t widely known on the internet is beyond me.
    • There’s something darkly humorous about having a cardiology appointment rescheduled.
    • Today’s minor annoyance: “I did that” stickers—Biden’s on gas pumps, Trump’s on eggs. How original. Please jump off a cliff into a pit of rusty razor blades.

  • Tuesday, Jan 28th, 2025

    • With the understanding that Apple is seldom the first at something (something the Android Crew is eager to point out pretty much always), I am very happy to see that Samsung has opened its mouth about a non-invasive blood sugar test on a wearable. This is a big deal for folks with diabetes, and if it’s on an ‘affordable piece of tech’, I promise you a ton of us would buy it regardless of cost. More than anything else, that’s a quality of life enhancement. Up to this point, a CGM is the only way to keep from pricking your fingers multiple times a day, but a CGM still breaks the skin and can be costly.
    • Meta says All Your Toks Are Belong To Us, Plz Taek R Monee. But do go on about how TikTok is a national security threat and this had nothing to do with TikTok drinking every other platform’s milkshake. A reminder of the brilliance of Bill Hicks:
      • “Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here are 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!”
    • Here is a link to the Posse Comitatus Act. The US Military being deployed to California would be leading every newscast and on the front page of every paper. It’s not.
    • Jim Acosta leaving CNN reminded me of what a real anchorman looks like signing off, and before you say newsmen don’t roll like that anymore, I’d tell you, “I know. That’s the problem.”

  • Monday, January 27th, 2025

    • I swear I am nowhere near Maine, this is not my fault.
    • Since eggs are the low-hanging fruit du jour, I suppose this is funny. I’d argue that you can make this about most ‘experts’ about anything on the internet. There’s a joke that goes along the lines of “So, all the folks that were experts about contagious disease are all First Amendment scholars now? Cool, cool.”
    • I can’t express to you how much this won’t happen, but there are certain situations where the only real response should be “You are not a serious person, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me when the adults show up, sit down, and shut the fuck up.” It should be repeated like a mantra—no one will.
    • I was just reminded of an episode of some crime procedural I’ve watched where someone was setting fires, and it turned out that it was a fireman, or ex-fireman, or a wanna-be fireman. They create the disaster, solve it, and get called a hero before everything is revealed. I think we’d do well to remember this storyline for a while. It may be useful. That said, I still think that 2.0 will be similar to 1.0 when it comes to astonishing incompetence. Don’t be surprised if they tank everything trying to solve a problem they created.
    • I realize that I am in a position to do this more easily than others, but laughing at the clusterfuck seems to be the best option for me. It reeks of privilege, I know. All I can tell you is that I’m laughing at them, and waiting for what I think is the inevitable conclusion of this shitshow. I don’t think he lasts the term. Bookmark this so you can laugh at me when I’m proven wrong, but something physical or mental is going to do what no one else has been able to do, and if that’s the only way this ends, I’ll take it. The only downside is what’s on the other side of that ending: A very sticky couch.

  • PODCAST: Roley Podcast for Jan 26th, 2025

    This is a continuation of last week’s rant about Walled Gardens like Facebook and open source. H/T to heathcliffnull for explaining like I’m five.

    Link:

    Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

  • PHOTO: Dumbsicle, Jan 20th, 2025

    Your intrepid idiot standing on the deck under the Lesner Bridge in Virginia Beach, taking pics with his iPhone on a tripod, in 18-degree weather.

  • VLOG: VLOG 01 — JAN 2025

    It’s been a minute. There are reasons.

  • Thursday, Jan 16th, 2025

    • I’d have liked to have been a fly on the wall during the meeting that led to Biden and Co.’s attempt to reverse the TikTok ban. There are a lot of theories about why people wanted TikTok to go, but I’m pretty sure national security isn’t the real reason. The two I think are more likely is that A) The PTB doesn’t like the fact that TikTokers speak a lot of truth to bullshit, and have done very well at that. Look no further than the pandemic for examples of TikTok creators smacking that down on the quick. B) TikTok allows more people than ever to make a living from content creation instead of being in the office. RTO has been a priority for the status quo since the pandemic ‘ended’, and they’d like to take that option away. What wasn’t taken into account is how much the TikTok economy contributes to the overall economy, and they shit a brick when they crunched those numbers. So, no, barring SCOTUS upholding the ban, TikTok isn’t going away on Sunday. Once this is all over, I think we should focus on all social media, not just the ones ‘we don’t like’. It’s all been weaponized in one form or another, and while I’d really like to see it all thrown into the sun, we need to rethink social media. Period.
    • On a related note, I’ve signed up for a micro.blog account. I’m watching a playlist made by Numeric Citizen on how to use micro.blog. One thing I might find useful. I can subscribe to the RSS feeds for my accounts elsewhere, cross-post them to my micro blog, and then they will post to the other accounts I select. So, I could subscribe to my YT feed, which will post to my micro.blog, and then post to my Bluesky. The same could be done for this post on WP. It looks like you have to be on the $5/ month plan, but that’s MUCH less than the services like Buffer that charge at least 15 a month to do the same thing. I haven’t seen if there’s a way to schedule native posts (ones that are made in micro.blog as opposed to another feed), but if most of what’s getting posted is from another source, it may be a feature where the post originated. Of course, this may not matter to you at all. Not sure it matters to me, honestly. Food for thought.
    • Winter has come for the first time in five years or so around here. There’s a reason I tell people I’m FROM Maine. I was BORN there, that’s about it. Thanks to the US Navy, before the age of 13 I spent half of that in Hawaii and a good chunk of the other half in Gitmo. Winter was never on the dance card. The middle of next week the lows are going to be in the teens, and I am going to be miserable. They say we’ll have a pattern flip in February, and I am just counting the days. Hat Tip to Ryan Hall, who has become my go-to guy on the weather.

  • Tuesday, January 14th, 2025

    • Since I’ve become a big believer in not opening your mouth until you’ve tried to educate yourself, here’s Vol. 1 of the Jack Smith Report, posted with no further comment adjacent to it.
    • Pete Hegseth is a slimy, sweaty, creepy Herb Tarlek cosplayer. That said, there is no need whatsoever for the dramatics. Sen Gillibrand’s over the top rant is pathetically performative, and it cheapens the very legitimate questions she had.
    • I decided to pull the trigger on a new micro.blog. I’m going to play with it a little while before I make it public. Pretty sure you’ll figure it out though, it’s the same everywhere…

  • Monday, January 13th, 2025

    • Last time, I mentioned the new desk chair, and that it appeared unable to recline. It does, in fact, recline. It would have done so from the get if certain people who shall remain nameless would have installed the chair plate the right way instead of backwards. Let us never speak of this again.
    • Maddow is appearently going back to 5 nights a week until April. Of course this has everything to do with covering the new Administration and NOTHING AT ALL TO DO WITH THEIR RATINGS GOING DOWN THE TOILET. NOTHING AT ALL.
    • Anyone taking bets as to whether we get Vol 1 of the Jack Smith Report today? Don’t be surprised if SCOTUS blocks it just before Midnight.
    • Apparently my once-a-decade dust up with VB Code Enforcement/Tragic Hollow HOA is due. I get an email every day from USPS, and I see two letters from the City. One addressed solely to me, and one addressed to both of us. That’s weird. I wonder if I’ve been cited for something separately? Now I get to spend all day waiting for the mail and wondering if it’s what I *think* it is, or if it’s some other bullshit.
    • I’m by no means a guru when it comes to WordPress, but is Matt Mullenweg ok? It’s giving “It’s MY ball, we play by MY rules” out at the kickball field. Actually, are all the Techbros morphing into the recess bullies they hated in school? Sure seems that way.